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Carl Icahn'
s Profile & Performance

Profile

Carl Icahn is an activist investor. He takes minority stakes in public companies and typically pushes for change. He invests with three investment vehicles: the 7 billion hedge fund, Icahn Partners, American Real Estate Partners (AREP), a public traded private equity firm, and ICAHN MANAGEMENT LP, a $2 billion hedge fund. GuruFocus tracks the third portfolio, which covers all the stocks owned by Icahn Partners. Mr. Icahn has a personal wealth of $17 billion.

Investing Philosophy

Mr. Icahn buys beaten-down assets that nobody else wants, usually out of bankruptcy, then fixes them up and sells them when they are back in favor. Regarding to his style, explains Icahn: The consensus thinking is generally wrong. If you go with a trend, the momentum always falls apart on you. So I buy companies that are not glamorous and usually out of favor. It is even better if the whole industry is out of favor.

Top Ranked Articles

Carl Icahn is famous for being an activist investor, where he buys a big stake in a corporation that enables him to influence the board. He has said, “I make all these billions because there are so many companies with problems that can be easily fixed.” So he is one kind of investor who involves himself in the decision making process of the company. He comes in and restructures/fixes the company's problems to drive its share price much higher. Read more...

Guinness Peat Group (GPG) dominates its industry, is managed in the interest of shareholders, is financially strong and most importantly, it can be bought at a huge discount to its fair value. Read more...

After fellow activist investor, Daniel Loeb set off the media earlier this week with his declaration to obtain a long position in Herbalife (HLF), a company that Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman just shorted weeks ago, corporate raiding Guru Carl Icahn has been reported yesterday afternoon of joining Loeb in taking a piece of the action. Read more...

Carl Icahn is known for his activist investing. Thanks to Zerohedge who made a copy of Icahn 4Q09 Letter to Icahn Partners LP Investors available at www.scribd.com. One can get a glimpse of what’s happened with his investments and what goes on in his mind. GuruFocus tracks Icahn Capital Management’s long equity position. As of December 31, 2009, we record 2.87 $billion allocated among 18 stocks. We know Icahn manages far more money than this amount. As disclosed in his letter (Page 3), long equity position is only 15.4% of the total portfolio. The rest is long credit (34.6%), short equity and short credit. His investment performance has been good: since inception of 2004, the partnership returned a total of 41.3%, beating S&P500’s 5.9%. In 2009, the partnership returned 31.9%, also beating S&P 500. Read more...

Activist billionaire investor Carl Icahn just reported that his funds have bought an aggregate amount of 50 million shares of Chesapeake Energy (CHK), which is about 7.56% of total shares outstanding. Carl Icahn started to buy the shares on April 19 at $18 a share and has added to the positions as the stock prices collapsed to around $14. His last purchase was on yesterday, May 24. His average cost is about $15.7 a share. Today Chesapeake stock closed at $15.99. Read more...

Commentaries and Stories

Undoubtedly Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) is one of the best investors in the world. He founded Icahn Capital LP, which had $31.89 billion under management at Dec. 31, 2014. The investor reported increasing his stake in Chesapeake Energy Corporation (CHK), a $9.33 billion market cap, according to GuruFocus Real Time Picks. More...

Carl Icahn, billionaire activist investor, increased his stake in Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) for the first time in two years. The natural gas and oil company has been struggling due to falling oil prices, and many investors have turned bearish on the stock. More...

Larry Robbins (Trades, Portfolio) of Glenview Capital Management has recently initiated a long position in Manitowoc (MTW) by buying over 8.6 mn shares of the company. Last quarter, another noted investor Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) bought Manitowoc's shares with intention to force management to spin-off the company's Food Service equipment business. Icahn also added more shares to his position in January and currently holds 10,582,660 shares of Manitowoc. More...

Pershing Capital Management Founder and CEO Bill Ackman (Trades, Portfolio) spoke with FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Deirdre Bolton regarding the recent report that federal prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are probing potential market manipulation of Herbalife. On whether Herbalife can clean up their act, Ackman said, “there is no future for Herbalife as a legal company,” and, “I have a lot of confidence in the Department of Justice.” Ackman goes on to say, “we are totally open to full and fair look into details,” and that the senior management at Herbalife “knows they are running a pyramid scheme.” On Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio)’s relationship with Herbalife Ackman said, “I think [url=http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=Carl+Icahn]Carl More...

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) is known for his activist campaigns. Navistar (NAV) is one of his activist targets. He started building a position in the company in late 2011 and has been slowly increasing his stake. Last quarter, he purchased 1.94 million shares of the company. He currently holds 16.27 million shares of Navistar. Here's a look at the company's business in detail. More...

There are some fairly pervasive concerns for investors in 2015. China has been slowing so the effects and extent of government stimulus are being scrutinized. There is also difficulty in Europe, which has recently launched its own version of quantitative easing. Further, the United States dollar has been rapidly strengthening against virtually all other currencies making the products of the biggest companies more expensive to their consumers. With all these things in mind, success could potentially be found in a corporation with little exposure to the specified issues. More...

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) is known for his activist campaigns. Last quarter, he bought Manitowoc's (MTW) shares with intention to force management to spin-off the company's Food Service equipment business. He also added more shares to his position in January and currently holds 10,582,660 shares of Manitowoc. The company recently agreed to his demand to split the company. Here's a look at the company's business in detail. More...

Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) of Icahn Capital Management LP recently increased his stakes in three positions, while also adding a new position to his portfolio of 27 stocks, valued at $31.89 billion and a quarter over quarter turnover rate of 2%. More...

Globally known MLM based healthcare product maker Herbalife (HLF) has some major players in finance betting against the company due to its controversial practices. Ever since the US dollar had been gaining in strength since November 2014 versus other major currencies, and also the news of pending probes against the company coming to light, the stock seems to be going downhill. After Herbalife had posted its below-expected earning of Q3 2014, analysts like Timothy Ramey of Pivotal Research Group, has come down heavily to cut down on estimates of the stock price, from $110 to $75. The EPS estimates have been cropped as well, going from $1.34 to $1.22, alongside the 2015 full-year estimates, going down from $5.50 to $5.00. The net income from Q3 2014 went down by as much as 92%, owing to the pre-tax charges it faces from the reassessment of audit of assets and liabilities in the Venezuelan Bolivar. In short, there are problems all around. More...

A "unicorn" in venture capital parlance is a $1 billion company, and a publicly-traded incubator that hopes to grow the next unicorn is Spectral Capital Corp (FCCN). Spectral Capital is a startup incubator that invests in fast-growth technology companies, similar to famous venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Venrock, Accel and Greylock. Spectral Capital invests in founders and helps them rapidly test, deploy and refine their services while "incubating" under its care. Incubators provide capital and services to their incubating companies, often handling recruitment, technology, accounting and legal to jump-start their growth. Because shares of Spectral Capital are public (stock symbol "FCCN"), anyone is able to buy a portion of this incubator and benefit from its performance. More...

On February 11, 2015 legendary investor Carl Icahn released a letter to his twitter followers discussing Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) prospects. Apple is one of the biggest postitions in Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio)'s portfolio and Icahn has been a vocal activist shareholder of the company in the recent years. In yesterday's letter, Icahn has argued that the company's stock price could gain 84% from the current levels. His adjusted EPS forecast for FY2015 is $9.70. Since Apple is growing at a faster More...

Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) of Icahn Enterprises (IEP) and his son Bret Icahn appeared on CNBC to discuss Apple (AAPL). Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) made its clear that he is pleased with Apple and thinks that Tim Cook is doing a great job. During the interview Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) said a short squeeze is now occurring in Apple and a bigger buyback should be done. He's pleased with Apple quarter, and he will revise guidance. Bret Icahn and his portfolio management partner David Schechter of Sargon More...

Since Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) took a stake in Ebay (EBAY) his has been pressing the firm to spin-off paypal, change in the board room, and even a sale of the whole company. Icahn went after board members mainly Marc Andreessen who firm made massive profits from buying skpe from Ebay for $2.75 billion and selling its to Microsoft (MSFT) for over $8.0 billion. This back an forth between Icahn and Andreessen lead to Him and two other board members stepping down. Even after Ebay said it wont spin-off paypal over and over. When on to announce a spin-off after Apple (AAPL) announced Applepay. Ebay and Icahn throughout 2014 had two agreements between them that fell apart multiple times. Now a new standstill agreement has been announced with Icahn getting to board seats. More...

Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) reported Friday that he purchased more shares of a crane and foodservice company in which he began investing in December and which he planned to push for separating into two entities. More...

Carl Icahn (Trades, Portfolio) spent the weeks before Christmas revving up for his latest activist play, buying millions of shares and call options for Manitowoc Co. Inc. (MTW). The investor, who tells his Twitter followers he makes money “studying natural stupidity,” acquired 10,532,660 shares in aggregate, or 7.77% of the company, according to GuruFocus Real Time Picks. More...

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